James Blake is an aggravating player. In style, he vaguely resembles Federer, but lacking Federer’s mental resolve, his creativity, and his ability to make amazing shots. Blake is a shotmaker, no doubt. He hits harder than most players on tour, but it comes at a price. Errors.

Although Blake showed signs of doing well on grass evidenced by his semifinal appearance at Queen’s, he’s up and down as a player.

Blake was given no favors by drawing the steady Italian, Andreas Seppi, in the first round. Blake appeared to be suffering from some stomach issues as he appeared to be taking antacids. Despite going down two sets, Blake had his chances to push the match to a fourth set going up 5-0 on superb hitting but yielded the next 7 points in a row. Blake becomes the first seed to fall: 7-5, 6-4, 7-6(5).

Federer’s opening round looked to be fairly straight-forward. Yen-Hsun Lu, a name that gives Dick Enberg trouble (Lu also goes by Rendy, but Dick Enberg calls him Randy), is a steady player, not quite as good as Seppi. He’s had good victories before winning over Nalbandian. At 64, he’s the highest ranked player from Asia. For a while, Roger looked pretty solid. Chances to break, easy holds. But Lu kept coming back in his own games, and finally secured an early break. This must have been a wake up call for Roger, as he broke back and eventually broke again. Roger generally starts first sets tight. If he gets past that, he relaxes, and so he did against Lu. 7-5, 6-3, 6-2.

One thing of note. Roger seemed to be running around his backhand less in this match than he normally does. I wonder if this is a modification he is making to his game so he doesn’t yield so much court.

Feliciano Lopez is struggling in a fifth set against lucky loser, Karol Beck. Lopez reached the quarterfinals last year, losing to Marat Safin. And Lopez becomes the second seed to drop.

Kohlschreiber d. Serra 7-6(3), 6-1, 6-4
Garcia-Lopez d. Callieri 6-2, 6-3, 6-2
Fish d. Roitman 6-3, 6-3, 4-1 ret.
Gicquel d. Mannarino 6-2, 6-2, 6-4.
K. Beck d. Lopez 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, 4-6, 10-8

Tipsy is up two sets to none over Hernych. Soderling lost the first set in a tiebreak to Muller. Djokovic and Verdasco up later today.